


That's All

by Lesetoilesfous



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4499751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesetoilesfous/pseuds/Lesetoilesfous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU-ish oneshot set in the vague but distant future. </p><p> </p><p>“What did you think this was to me, Killua?” He laughs again, and the tears are still falling, and he’s still bleeding, and he’s shaking, a little, now.  “A joke? A game?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's All

They’re not going to survive. Bullets ricochet through the aftershock of explosions and fire spits through the air they’re breathing, stinging with the tang of smoke and metal. They’re bleeding and they’re broken and they’re tired and no one could survive this. Not even them.

Big hands thrust against his chest, shoving him backwards as the road on which they’re standing crumbles, and it’s only a lifetime of electric shocks that lets him reach out, lightning fast, to catch him before he falls. Killua holds Gon as tightly as a drowning man does the oxygen going stale in his lungs whilst he’s sinking but Gon shakes him off, hard. He pushes him again, but the road’s jagged edge is already broken. Bloody, Killua snarls.

“What?”

Gon stares at him, “run!”

Killua’s eyes narrow, and he plants his feet, as if the fire around them and the helicopters and the screaming, roaring guns aren’t enough. “What.” He repeats, through gritted teeth. Big hands again, shoving, again, and he slips a little on the debris but his heel twists on instinct to lock him in place.

“Run!” The howling wind is biting cold despite the scorch of the world falling down around them. Gon’s eyes are wide and sweat is running from his temples, mixing with the blood splattered and congealing across his features, over his lips cheeks. He’s barely the boy Killua met once, in a tunnel, running, and he hasn’t changed at all.

“Hell no.”

Gon stares and his jaw tenses, and it’s not much but Killua’s been watching him for years and it’s enough, and he swallows and clenches his fist and then there’s something flickering towards them and Gon is diving before he has time to process it and they crash down behind a lump of concrete bigger than the both of them at about the same time the grenade explodes. Gon’s heavy, solid, bloody body is curled around him and he can barely make out the dusty twilight of the clouded day past the mass of him, and the smell of sweat and his blood is so heavy Killua could choke but he’s too busy trying to hear past the ringing which is pounding at his ears to pay it much attention.

“Killua,” Gon says, and he opens his eyes and stares until the sound connects with the movement of his chapped, bruised lips. “Killua.” He says it again, and he’s staring at him, and Killua stares right back, defiant, as if he isn’t on his back on the concrete, isn’t bloody or bruised or trapped, now. “You need to run.”

Killua grits his teeth and swallows and glares. “No.”

Gon stares at him, and his expression barely changes; his mouth flattens, just a little, just marginally. And then he turns to look away and his broad chest shifts as he lets out a quick, deep breath. The bullets rattle across the pavement like cacophonous applause and Killua lies on his back and doesn’t care. Gon sits up, and Killua follows, and together they crouch behind their makeshift bunker. Gon presses his palm to his side, where blood flowers thick and slow and dark from his ribs to his hip. His jaw is tense, and his hair is dirty with ash and blood. When he turns to Killua, he catches his breath, because, at some point, silently, he’s begun to cry. It’s not right, here, where helicopters chop the frigid air into a mockery of heartbeats thudding down past the erratic chatter of machine guns. “Please, Killua. Run.”

Killua stares and he stares and then he swallows and he looks away, at the shattered windows of the buildings behind them, gleaming like broken teeth. His nostrils flare, and he sucks a quick deep breath of bitter-sweet sweat and burning metal. “You can always trust a Freecss.”

“What?”

Killua whirls, snarling. “You!” Gon is perfectly still, and the ground beneath them shudders. “I mean come on, this is low, even for you.”

Gon frowns, just a little, but then a helicopter descends and he’s pulling him under his cloak into the warm, dusty dark and for a moment they stay like that, so close Gon’s nose is pressed to his hair and Killua’s to the hollow of his throat. The helicopter swings away with a buzzing whirr, and Killua shoves him back, pressing his back against the concrete. “I’m not going anywhere.”

A muscle at the corner of Gon’s jaw leaps, and he stares at him and grits his teeth and then glances back, past their barrier. Rock cracks like bone and cascades from the edges of the crumbled road to another, some 40 feet below them. “I can’t go any further.” His palm is still pressed against his side, but his fingers are red with blood now and it’s bright and wet as if he’d been picking blackberries, not dying slowly.

Killua nods at the grey sky, clouded now with darker ash, the smoke of fire and shattered buildings. “I know.”

Gon makes a sound, low, in the back of his throat, and his free hand presses into the tarmac, open, but hard enough to crack the surface and push through it as though it were little more than fresh clay. “Please.” Killua glances at him from the corner of his eye, and Gon is staring at the broken road before them, cluttered with the twisted skeletons of cars and roadsigns. “Please. Killua. Don’t make me take you with me. Don’t make me die knowing that.”

“We’re not dead yet.”

“Killua.” Gon’s voice breaks, and the tarmac spreads between his fingers like sand and he closes his eyes and when he opens them again the bullets have ceased, for a moment, and the helicopters are gone or landed because there’s a breath of silence in which the smoke and fire swell to curl within the empty space. “You can’t die. Not now. Not for me. Please.”

“That’s a change of tune.” Killua mutters, making no move to leave. Gon opens his eyes and turns to him. Killua rubs at the blood running into his eye and shrugs, folding his arms. “What? You didn’t give much of a damn for my safety before.” He huffs, mouth curling but not smiling. “You’d have me break or burn or die at the drop of a hat to prove a fucking point. But no. Not now. Now there’s a chance you’ll actually die. So now you’ll be the hero. And hey, Killua’ll go along with it. Killua always does. Because you’re you and I’m me and you know what, fuck you.”

The bullets start again and this time they’re closer, mowing into the several feet of concrete that forms their barrier and was once a wall, possibly, with skull jarring thuds. Killua flinches but Gon is moving, getting onto his knees and shifting closer. “I don’t understand.”

“Gon!” Killua doesn’t know if he’s crying or shouting but he stares at him and he tries to make him understand. “Don’t start now. Don’t. Just. Don’t. It’s too much, and I won’t, so please don’t ask. I won’t leave you to die. I can’t.” And his voice shatters and his hands have wound themselves into Gon’s ruined, filthy vest at some point but Gon himself does not so much as tremble. Nor does he move to hold him.

“I never.” He stops. The silence between them somehow outweighs the bullets still beating into their barrier in sporadic storms of smoke and showers of broken concrete. Tears fall onto Killua’s bloody knuckles like rain, hot and heavy, but he doesn’t let go. And then Gon laughs. It’s very soft, and very sad, and it takes everything that Killua has to look up at him, then.

“What did you think this was to me, Killua?” He laughs again, and the tears are still falling, and he’s still bleeding, and he’s shaking, a little, now.  “A joke? A game?”

Killua frowns, and he shakes his head, and his hands go loose around the damp wrinkled fabric of his shirt. “No, I.”

But Gon hasn’t stopped. “You thought I didn’t care. What? Whether you were hurt? Unhappy? If you lived?  Died?” The tears fall hard and fast and he’s staring at Killua like he’s a stranger and Killua lets go of him and leans back and Gon makes no move to come closer. And around them with great thundering cracks the road is falling apart at the seams and buildings are collapsing and helicopters are crashing burning to the earth, screaming.

Gon shuts his eyes, and his brows pull upwards and his lips quiver and he squeezes his eyes shut a little tighter and tears fall down his bloody, dusty cheeks anyway. He presses his hand to his face, and he trembles. “Oh. God.” His body shakes and a sob breaks wet and rough from his chest and Killua stares and can’t make a sound. And his tears keep falling to the broken tarmac and the bullets keep chattering around them and the fire roars. He laughs, again, and it’s awful and hollow as he presses the heels of his palms to his eyes as if to clear his cheeks of the tears that keep falling, anyway. He stares at Killua and he shakes his head. “All this time. These _years_. You thought.” He stops. Swallows, rubs his eyes again. “You never knew me at all.”

Killua is still staring, and he tries to wet his lips because his mouth is sandpaper dry and filling with smoke and he tries to speak again and manages, “no.”

Gon’s big, rough, bloody hand rests on his. It’s small in his grip, and moonlight pale against the tan and dirt of his skin. He squeezes his hand, and it’s endlessly gentle, and he’s still crying. He offers him a smile, and his lips quiver when he does and it’s the slightest curve of an expression Killua has ever seen and he think it might be the warmest. Gon leans forward, and presses his wet, chapped lips to Killua’s forehead in a brief, gentle kiss, moving to clutch the back of his head as he does so.

“It’s ok.” An explosion rocks the road on which they’re standing, and Killua thinks he can almost see through what’s left of their barrier. There’s more rubble ahead, but they’ll need to run to make it to the next hunk of shelter. Gon’s smile widens, a little. “I’m so glad I met you.”

And he steps back and Killua is standing because damn the risk but Gon blows him a kiss and says “I cared,” and Gon says “run” and then he turns around the edge and into the hail of oncoming bullets and Killua can hear them hitting his body in a torrent of little thumps that ring through his teeth and bones and muscles until with a quiet, quiet thud he hears his body meet the earth. And Killua doesn’t follow because he can’t. Can’t even bring himself to look because he’d learnt to wear his soul around his body years ago and so he knew that Gon’s wasn’t there. And the sky should have been dark and the world should have stopped turning and every person in it should have wept because this couldn’t be fixed and it never would be and something had gone wrong, somewhere, because that wasn’t right, it was an error, it wasn’t how the universe was supposed to work the world was supposed to have Gon in it and how was it supposed to keep moving if he wasn’t. If he didn’t. If.

All he saw, in the end, was a heavy body and a thick head of dusty hair and blood, running, and it was absolutely still and it was empty and it was every fear and every sadness and every single thing he’d ever hoped, broken, made flesh and cooling.

 


End file.
